Regents Approve Plan to Evaluate and Improve New York Schools

The New York State Board of Regents on Monday approved a plan laying out the state’s goals for its education system, as required by the sweeping federal education law signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 known as the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The Regents’ approval means the state can now submit its plan to the federal Department of Education for review and approval.

The plan details how the Regents will implement the federal law, including how individual schools will be evaluated and identified for what the law refers to as either comprehensive or targeted support and improvement.

Under the plan, elementary and middle schools would continue to be evaluated on English and math test scores and high schools on graduation rates. But the plan would also hold schools accountable for other measures, such as performance on science and social studies exams, the number of students making progress in achieving English language proficiency, college and career readiness, chronic absenteeism and, eventually, out-of-school suspensions.

Under the plan, the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools receiving Title I federal funds, which go to low-income schools and high schools with six-year graduation rates less than 67 percent, would be identified for comprehensive support and improvement. Those schools would receive additional funding and supervision, including visits from external reviewers, and will be required to choose at least one school improvement strategy from a list approved by the state. Schools not receiving Title I funds that performed within the range of that bottom five percent would also qualify for the program.

In general, schools that fail to get off the comprehensive support and improvement list after three years would be put into the state’s receivership program, which might lead them to close.

One source of controversy has been the plan’s treatment of transfer high schools, which give students who have fallen behind or dropped out of other schools a second chance to graduate. New York City has 51 such schools, serving 13,000 students. Because they serve students who have struggled elsewhere, very few transfer schools have six-year graduation rates of 67 percent or higher, meaning that almost all transfer schools would be designated as in need of comprehensive support and improvement.

In response to concerns expressed by city officials and advocates for transfer schools, the state modified the plan so that transfer schools will not automatically be put into receivership if they are on the list for three years. However, some educators are still worried that putting transfer schools on the list would stigmatize them and create an incentive to avoid serving the neediest students.

Chad Aldeman, a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit education research and consulting firm, praised the academic standards and assessments on which New York’s plan is based, as well as its blueprint for helping schools in need of improvement. But he said that the very complicated system by which the state will identify the lowest-performing five percent of schools could be a problem.

“The biggest challenges, I think, will be translating this system for teachers and parents and educators,” he said. “If someone doesn’t understand what they’re being held accountable for, there’s a risk that they can’t change their behavior.”